In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated cop) is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate (a subject complement), such as the word is in the sentence "The sky is blue." The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things. A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary edu...

So is “is” used to copulate the subject and the predicate? Or does the subject copulate with the predicate using “is”?

I think that being verbs function as a lazy shorthand for action verbs. Not unlike how many people use personal and demonstrative pronouns. Proper grammar I think prefers a being verb, such as “I do write” versus “I write”, but I find such practice completely superfluous. If a thing did not exist, it would not be doing or being. Lacking direct knowledge, it seems easier to simply describe that “I observe X” or “I posit Y” to assume some responsibility for the framing of my perceptions.

ETA: The only equally lazy verb in current common use is, I think, “have”.

E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, sometimes denoted É or E′) is a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be, including all conjugations, contractions and archaic forms. Some scholars advocate using E-Prime as a device to clarify thinking and strengthen writing. A number of other scholars have criticized E-Prime's utility.

I wrote some stories using it. It’s kind of fun. I don’t think it’s great for really improving clarity much but it’s an interesting challenge.

Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula 'to be' in English). One can distinguish languages that simply do not have a copula and languages that have a copula that is optional in some contexts. Many languages exhibit this in some contexts, including Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malay/Indonesian, Turkish, Japanese, Ukrainian, Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Arabic, Berber, Ganda, Hawaiian, Sinhala, a...